NORRISTOWN — Even without the help of a resident lion, Elmwood Park Zoo is cooking up a roaring good time.

Make that a Roaring ’20s good time.

So brush up on your Charleston steps and steer your Packard toward Harding Boulevard on June 28, because the era of glamorous flappers, Art Deco, jazz, and covert gin- and whiskey-making will be the backdrop for the zoo’s annual Beast of a Feast gala.

Not coincidentally, the night of food, drink, music, gambling and animal watching serves as the setting for a milestone anniversary that pays tribute to the decade when a couple of white-tailed deer and some ground from a private Norristown landowner sparked the iconic gem that the zoo is today.

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Like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and screen legend Lauren Bacall, Elmwood Park Zoo is turning 90 this year.

“Every year we try to make the Beast of a Feast bigger and better, and we wanted this year to be really special because of our 90th anniversary, so the 1920s theme is perfect,” said Jen Conti, the zoo’s development officer. “We’ll even have casino games like roulette and poker because we thought that would tie in well with the 1920s theme, with Al Capone and the gangsters.”

The Elmwood Park Zoo folks would love it if guests arrived resplendent in sartorial elegance worthy of the era.

For men, that might mean swapping jeans and khakis for waistcoats, tuxedos and bow ties that would win a nod of approval from Jay Gatsby.

For women, “a nice dress with a strand of pearls might be good,” Conti noted.

When it comes to the length of the dress, the jury’s out on that one, depending on how accurate you’d like to be.

Fashion-era.com tells us that in 1924 dresses were basically calf-length and didn’t start to rise tp the shorter hemline generally associated with the flapper era until the following year.

The evening kicks off at 6 p.m. with an elaborate buffet, courtesy of Maggiano’s Little Italy of King of Prussia and the velvety sounds of the Smooth Edge Band.

Maggiano’s, a culinary highlight of past “Beast of a Feast” events where it shared the spotlight with other caterers, is the sole headliner this time around, Conti said.

“Maggiano’s has a wide variety of food — from fish to chicken to pasta and dessert, they cover the whole spectrum. They were really excited to be asked to do the whole thing for us.”

All evening long guests can participate in a wide array of activities, including giraffe feedings; sun conure feedings at the “Birds of Paradise” exhibit; a live “Birds in Flight” show; “bootleggers bar;” raffles; silent auction — “with everything from Vera Bradley handbags to passes to swim with sharks at Adventure Aquarium” — and complimentary personalized “old-time” souvenir photos taken in costume.

Marketing director Shaun Rogers has been going through tons of old photos to create a time line of Elmwood Park Zoo’s evolution for guests to enjoy, he said.

“We’ll have photos to show this is what the zoo looked like in 1946, in 1957. We’re really proud of how far it’s come over all these years.”

Guests will be the first to contribute a square of tile art to a piece of mobile mosaic artwork, Rogers noted.

“We’re giving guests the opportunity to create their own tile that will part of the mosaic and we’re planning a number of these events over the summer.”

Those who participate will be making zoo history, Conti added.

“That tile will be in the zoo forever,” she said.

With the event fast approaching a goal of 1,000 tickets sold, people have responded favorably to the reduced price of $35, Conti said.

Previously, ticket prices have exceeded $100, she added.

“We’re hoping everyone can afford $35 and it will draw more people into the event. We came close to 1,000 people last year. People are getting to know the zoo more. They’re excited about the giraffes. You don’t hear ‘Elmwood Park Zoo – where’s that?’ You hear ‘Elmwood Park Zoo – I love that place.’ That shows in our ticket sales for these special events. And now we’re AZA-accredited which is a great accomplishment for a zoo our size, since there are only 224 accredited zoos and aquariums.”

Much of Elmwood Park Zoo’s newfound popularity can be traced back to the start of the new millennium, when it completed an expansion from eight to sixteen acres and added the Thomas Kimmel Conservation Kingdom, a state-of-the-art interactive playground and a Grasslands Exhibit.

But arguably, it just stood there sparkling as an undiscovered jewel until a onetime caterer came on board as top banana in 2012.

Perhaps no one else in the zoo’s 90 years has taken the bison by the horns in aggressively marketing the zoo as a stunning attraction as passionately as executive director Al Zone.

With the former catering entrepreneur at the helm, the zoo has penetrated the mercantile jungle in a big way, with memberships and revenue from all manner of events skyrocketing.

“The Philadelphia Zoo, Lehigh Valley Zoo and Erie Zoo are all run by businessmen, so that kind of paved the way for me a little bit,” Zone said at the time of his promotion. “I know this is the first time that the Elmwood Park Zoo has looked at a business guy instead of a zoo guy. When you already have a great zoo guy like (curator) Dave Wood, who does an amazing job, we don’t necessarily need two zoo guys, but we definitely need a business guy to keep us on track.”

Zone was especially proud of the completion of the Canopy Garden Pavilion, which holds nearly 200 guests and has helped make 1661 Harding Blvd. a true destination apart from just being a zoo, by putting the wedding, banquet and special events business through the roof, rain or shine.